Artificial Intelligence is poised to transform education more dramatically than any innovation since the internet.All schools should be focusing their thinking on how it will change teaching and learning, and going above that, how it will reshape our students’ future careers and lives.
I’ve been struggling with what our school does next with Artificial Intelligence. Last academic year, we started with a Professional Learning Community (PLC), developing a whole school Artificial Intelligence Policy, a list of approved AI Tools, and a framework of AI use for student assignments. Cora Yang and Dalton Flanagan inspired our employees to familiarize themselves with AI and to frame the work of the AI PLC. We invited Myron Dueck to come in November to give our work this year a boost. Thankfully, EBLANA Learning consultant Kimberly House introduced their program of comprehensive AI guidance for IB schools at the Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) autumn meeting yesterday. We also had an insightful conversation among the directors on the best current practices and the future of AI’s impact on schools.
Reflecting on what I learned yesterday, our PLC members should take the next step and complete some of the online AI training courses Eblana offers. In looking at their AI Implementation Framework for International Schools, Tashkent International School has done much of Phase 1 and bits of Phase 2.
A summary of my takeaways from yesterday’s session:
- I need to read UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework. “teachers must be the guardians of safe and ethical practice” and UNESCO expects an AI-rich environment in schools.
- Schools are struggling with how teachers can use AI to assess and give feedback to students. The goal should be how to enhance student engagement using AI.
- AI uses a huge amount of energy! Facts like generating one AI image is the equivalent of charging your phone 3x or a 30-second deep fake video is the same as streaming the entire catalog of the television show Friends 500,000x are incredible.
- AI is reducing “productive friction” in all of us, educators and students. How much cognitive offloading do we give to AI? What is worth doing myself and what is worth offloading to AI?
- We all need to be careful about what information we are putting into what LLMs. We also discussed how this relates to child safeguarding and we should all prepare for deep fake videos being used by teenagers.
- I will learn more about Gemini Gems, Perplexity, and become an AI-certified advanced leader through Eblana.
TIS Director's Blog 
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